All posts tagged ‘Toca Boca’

It’s no secret that we here at GeekMom love all of the kids’ apps by Toca Boca. Apps like Toca Tea Party and Toca Store encourage pretend play, and my daughter never gets enough of the hairstyling fun in Toca Hair Salon. Now my three-year-old can’t stop playing the newest offering by Toca Boca, Toca Tailor, which turns your young kids into little fashion designers.

Toca Tailor is completely intuitive and fun to play from the get-go. Your child simply taps the screen to choose one of four models, then flips through different shirt and pants options until they’re ready to start designing. A variety of patterns and colors are available to add personality to the outfit, although my daughter’s favorite feature is using the device’s camera to snap a picture of a pattern to use on the outfit. She wanders the house looking for the perfect design to add to her outfit, from the flowers on a rug to the stripes on her favorite skirt.

Toca Boca’s iPad and iPhone apps for children are consistent favorites with my youngest children. My three-year-old son favors Toca Robot, a cheery game in which you assemble a robot from an assortment of parts and then navigate it through a maze of balls and walls, collecting stars on your way. My six-year-old daughter is especially fond of styling the shaggy manes of Toca Hair Salon‘s quirky characters — and it scores points with me for its focus on whimsy and color rather than glamour. My special-needs eight-year-old enjoys a good game of Toca Store, especially the part where he gets to choose which items to sell in his shop. And all three kids adore serving me a big hunk of dragon cake in Toca Birthday Party.

The newest member of the Toca Boca app family is Toca Train. If you saw my recent review of Lola’s Math Train, you know any train-centric app is off to an advantaged start with my kids. Big, big choo-choo fans here. Add that special Toca Boca charm, and you’ve got a game full of kid appeal. Mom appeal, too: what I love about Toca Boca’s apps are that they aren’t full of flashing lights and raucous noises; they aren’t full of that frenetic, choppy, quick-cut action that dominates so much contemporary children’s media. (It’s worth noting that I receive many, many offers of apps to review, and I write about very few of them. I only post about apps my kids genuinely enjoy and I feel are worthy of their limited portion of screen time.) Toca Boca games have a gentleness about them, a peaceful interactivity that engages a child’s imagination without bombarding him with bling and frenzy.

The title of this post may make some people shudder. The thought of your tablet getting into the hands of your toddler is a preposterous idea. We thought so too, but decided to take the plunge on a recent long journey, and got our iPad decked out for the boy’s sticky fingers.

The first point of action was to get a sturdy case; we used the Trident Kraken II because it was what we had on hand. It held up pretty well, but will definitely disintegrate over time and extended abuse. At the end of the trip, nothing was cracked, scratched or broken, so it did the job. Toby had a hard time with some of the apps because the power button was still too easily accessible through the Kraken’s case. He would often get himself out of an app unintentionally, when not using it appropriately. It didn’t add greatly to the bulk of our iPad, which was nice.

The next step was to customize our content to prevent minimal accidental damage. My husband organised all our apps, putting everything that Toby was allowed access to on the first page, then on the second page were placed items he couldn’t really damage. The third page were folders containing apps that my husband and I regularly use. The fourth page had a folder labelled “Pre-Toby” and in this folder we placed all the features that he could potentially do damage with, or spend money accidentally with! None of these were locked, but they were sufficiently uninteresting to our two year old, and so if he got there accidentally he would quickly swipe back to apps whose icons were more fun.

In the same vein as their apps that I have previously reviewed (Helicopter Taxi, Toca Doctor, and Toca Tea Party), Toca Boca, a prolific app publisher, has several more, newer apps. I’ve profiled them below.

Toca Boca has a solid history of colorful, fun apps, where occasionally the device is used as a toy itself, instead of being the conduit to playing a game. Helicopter Taxi, for example, has kids running carefully walking around the house to ferry passengers around town. Toca Tea Party puts iPads in the position of being a table, complete with table cloth, cups, saucers, tea, juice, and goodies.

Their newer apps are just as fun.

Toca Paint My Wings
$.99
In Paint My Wings, kids choose colors made from berries to paint the wings of a butterfly. The app lets kids paint on either side of the butterfly’s body, and then it mirrors the effect on the other side, keeping everything symmetrical. The paintbrush shape can also be changed. Kids can send a picture of their creation to the Photos area of their device, or start a new butterfly. Each butterfly talks to them as they create.

Hair Salon. Image: Toca Boca

Toca Hair Salon
$1.99
Kids choose from one of six animals or characters to whom to give a haircut and style. The character then sits in the chair, and you use tools such as a comb, scissors, water, a hair dryer, camera, hair clippers, and a wide variety of spray-on colorings. Swipe across the screen to use the tools once they are selected. The character getting their hair done will make various approving noises from time to time. Once you are done, tap the camera option, then tap the character, and a photo will be saved in the Photos area. Then go back and choose a new character!

Robot Lab. Image: Toca Boca

Toca Robot Lab
$.99
Different from the two apps above, Robot Lab lets kids design their own robot. Choose from different options for legs, bodies, heads, and arms, and then play a maze game where you collect stars. Sometimes the stars are hidden behind objects. Each time you design a new robot, there is a slightly different set of robot body part options.

Store. Image: Toca Boca

Toca Store
$2.99
Toca Store is either a one or two player game where you play store. The shopkeeper chooses what wares to sell, choosing from food, toys, and other items, and the customer decides what to buy. Once the items are ready for sale, the shopkeeper invites a customer to shop. The customer then chooses an item and the shopkeeper chooses a price for the item, from 1 to 5 coins. It then gets rung up. The customer pays with coins from their coin purse, and puts the item in their bag. They can keep buying items until their money runs out, and then they get a receipt and can play again. If kids don’t have enough change to buy the last item, more money magically appears in their coin purse.

Toca Boca also has a Birthday Party Playtime app in the App Store, and I have no doubt that they’ll continue to come out with interesting and creative apps for kids.